Great News. We give our deep thanks to the Zimmer Foundation for committing $5,000 of support for this project. GlobalGiving progress had persisted for six months in a very "slow but steady" fashion, but this big bump finally allows us to jump in with both feet.
Planning Underway. Fredy Sierra and Jose Jimenez with our partner FIPAH in Honduras along with Dr. Sally Humphries (University of Guelph, Ontario) have begun to execute a deep and wonderful plan to use the vegetable seeds youare helping to provide! Here is an excerpt from their plan, as communicated by Dr. Humphries. I thought you as a donor via GlobalGiving would be esepcially interested in the plan for training. It always wise along with giving seeds to also share knowledge - and set up local bearers of that knowledge for success.
"Fredy and Jimenez recommend having two field schools in each of the three geographical zones (i.e. 6 in total): one for training people in vegetable/seed production in the upland areas and another for training in the low(er) zones. The idea is to limit how much people have to travel and to tailor the workshops to the geographic/environmental specifics of the different zones. The plan is to train 2 to 3 people per CIAL [farmer group], plus facilitators. The latter will push the project forwards. In total they estimate training 48 male community (CIAL) leaders and 72 women (CIAL) community leaders, plus FIPAH’s farmer facilitators. These workshops would include:
a. Agronomic management: site selection, soil preparation, sowing, etc. for managing: tomatoes, chiles, cabbages, cucumbers, green beans, carrots, onions, radishes, beets, mustard, lettuce, peas, pumpkin, squashes, shallots, okra, sweet maize, local Honduran varieties of: camote (sweet potato), yucca (cassava), soya (soy); melon, watermelon.
b. Artisanal seed production: selection of fruits/vegetables, seed drying, treatment, storage, seed and vegetable marketing, etc.
c. Nutrition: Workshop providing information on the nutritional characteristics of different vegetables, combinations of vegetables, food preparation (recipes), etc. in order to provide a broad understanding of the nutritional benefits of vegetables, leading to the development of a local nutritional model."
We will close the project on GlobalGiving now, since our goal is reached with your key help. But we will not stop reporting and will let you know as the seeds you funded are sent, planted, and harvested!
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